As some of you know, I’ve spent the last couple of years doing an MA in creative writing. I’ve often been struck by the similarities between these two occupations of crafting and writing, and I’m never surprised to find out that a poet crochets, or a seamstress writes.

Why is that?

Partly I think it’s the desire to make something out of nothing. Ideas and images roll around in the the brain, demanding to have some sort of existence in the real world. Sometimes you know where the urge to create comes from, because you’ve impulsively bought curlers for your hair and have nothing to keep them in, but sometimes it comes unbidden, without a specific origin.

And the joy is in the detail. Whether that is sewing little tabs onto the ends of a zip so that the end result will be neater, or whether it is describing in exact detail the pain of waking up with a hangover, still in the clothes you wore the night before, with folds of denim bunched up at the back of your sweaty knees, and a dead arm because you’ve been lying on it for several hours.

When you’re putting it all together you realise that you are entirely living in the moment. There is nothing else. While you struggle to attach a zip or make the description as exact as possible you are truly paying attention to what is in front of you. Mindful living is another way of putting it, and there is no better way to live than with the full attention of your whole being.

At some point you begin to see shape and form where before there was nothing. It’s about then that I often feel happiest, when the project is taking on an existence separate from me. However it began it’s now becoming something different, possibly not exactly what I had in mind, but it’s there. Real. Out on its own, ready to stand or fall.

Of course, the joy of crafting is that you end up with a finished thing much quicker than finishing a whole book, and possibly this explains why writers make things. Otherwise the wait to see the fruits of your labours begins to seem never ending

But today something else was finally finished. I passed my MA with a merit.